by David Foenkinos
Reviewed by Linda:
This award-winning French novel, composed as a prose poem, tells the heartbreaking life story of the brilliant artist Charlotte Salomon, who was killed by the Nazis at age 26. Salomon must, from a young age, overcome a bleak family history of mental illness and then Nazi persecution to create over 750 paintings. Like the literary works of Irène Némirovsky and Anne Frank, Salomon's art survived to astonish the world.